Apple Research & Technology Support

ARTS Laureate: NMR Centre Speeds Bio-molecular Research

Scientists at the Swedish NMR Centre will be able to analyse bio-molecular structures up to 100 times faster, and far more accurately, using Apple as the platform for real-time, high-throughput processing of data from multiple experiments. This important project — which is now supported by the Apple Research & Technology Support (ARTS) programme — will benefit research into diseases and new drug developments.

“Apple is ideal technology for this project because its OS X operating system is based on the power and performance of UNIX”, says Dr Victor Jaravine, who is leading the radical research. “The technology also means we can use standard office applications for presentations and reports. I am an enthusiastic Apple user, so I could see immediately that Apple offered a perfect fit for our platform requirements”.

Established in 1991, the Swedish NMR Centre (SNC) is a leader in the field of bio-molecular research. Based at the Natural Science Faculty of the University of Göteborg, the purpose of the Centre is to provide state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer facilities for research scientists from academic life and industry.

Bio-molecular structures hold the key to understanding the basis of diseases, and the design of pharmaceutical solutions to those diseases. However, their study often presents major challenges to researchers because of the size and complexity of the structures.

NMR spectroscopy is an important tool in overcoming these challenges – particularly in the burgeoning field of proteomics where NMR is used to identify the 3-dimensional structure, function and dynamics of proteins, nucleic acids and other biological macromolecules, as well as in structural genomics.

For scientists wanting to analyse molecules atom by atom, the highest possible magnetic fields are required from expensive spectrometers. SNC is one of the world’s best-equipped NMR facilities. The instrument park comprises one 500MHz spectrometer, three 600MHz spectrometers, two 800MHz spectrometers and one 900MHz spectrometer, as well as the latest generation of mass spectrometers.

Speed and Accuracy

With SNC spectrometers in use for many different kinds of bio-molecular structure experiments, the speed of processing and analysing output data, and its accuracy, is a significant issue for scientists and the users of their research.

“Traditionally, analysis is performed on fully arrayed data, off-line, without any optimisation in acquisition schedules”, says Dr Jaravine. “The result is that feedback delays are measured from hours to days. Data is often incomplete and additional measurements are often needed to verify accuracy. This is really a waste of time and a frustration in terms of what we can learn from the experiments, or potentially huge benefits in drugs development, for example”.

Dr Jaravine’s research field is in structural genomics (SG) and proteomics, and it was the problems of slow and inaccurate data analysis in the SG field that particularly drove his interest in better methods of acquiring and analysing NMR-generated data.

“It has become clear in structural genomics that NMR needs to match the level of automation and efficiency achieved by alternative techniques, such as X-ray”, he says. “So far, the high benchmark of automation and efficiency by NMR has been established only in a few large dedicated consortia. Individual researchers can not compete with regard to time, quality and compatibility of their results unless they have automation and efficiency“.

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